It's Election Night in Florida

Update 2: It's a new day in Florida, and a lousy one. Yes, we lost every race I was following. Every stinkin' one. Florida elected criminals, torturers and zealots. So my predictions below seem particular naive today. On the bright side, this blog might have been really boring for the next year or so had this crazy cast of teabaggers just drooped away into the night, so stay tuned, and keep following these rantings.

Update: I forgot to put this on but the amendment fight looks to be heading in a pretty specific direction right now. Only 2 (the military tax exemption), 5 and 6 (Fair Districts) are on the road to passage. The Hometown Democracy, Public Finance repeal and Class-Size revision are all well south of 60 percent right now.

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... and everywhere else, I know. Still, I thought I would once again do some live-blogging of just the most important races in the Sunshine State. I have posted my hopes, dreams, and pragmatic predictions on the blog already, and will update with results through the evening.

My hope for months has been that the elections will become more localized than the chattering class has predicted. Polls of late have made me doubt in that hope, but I still believe the GOP wave tonight can be ebbed a little bit in Florida.

For the sake of accountability, here are my rosy predictions from a few months ago, when I suggested every incumbent Congressman in Florida would be re-elected. I no longer believe that, but it would be nice. But while most national pundits believe our three most endangered Congressmen - Grayson, Boyd and Kosmas - all go down, I believe at least one, maybe two, will live through the night. The Senate race is gone, but we should be able to take the Governor's mansion, and maybe even one of the other Cabinet posts.

Links to my race-by-race posts are below:

FL-Sen: Meek-Rubio-Crist

FL-Gov: Sink-Scott

FL-02: Boyd-Southerland

FL-08: Grayson-Webster

FL-12: Edwards-Ross

FL-10: Justice-Young

FL-22: Klein-West

FL-24: Kosmas-Adams

FL-25: Garcia-Rivera

FL-Cabinet: Gelber-Bondi, Maddox-Putnam, Atwater-Ausley

Florida Cabinet: Gelber-Bondi, Maddox-Putnam, Atwater-Ausley

Update: Right now all Republicans are in the high 50s. It looks like everything but the Governor's seat is most likely going red this year.

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I am just doing one post for these races. I am sorry. I thought we would have some real contests this year, but it seems the only one which maybe will be an interesting fight to watch is the Attorney General fight. I suspect the Agriculture Commissioner race and the Chief Financial Officer contests will be routs.

In the AG race, I think Dan Gelber can pull this out, and he deserves it, but Pam Bondi is also a good candidate and can ride a Republican wave to victory. She surprised me by beating Jeff Kottkamp during the primary, and I am sure a lot of conservatives will tell me she never lost the upper hand.

I am voting for Scott Maddox in the Agriculture Commissioner race, but don't think he stands a shot at winning. Adam Putnam has the upper hand in name recognition and money. And he was on the air with statewide ads while Maddox was still holding cutesy contests for his supporters to pick his ads.

And in the CFO race, well, I haven't voted yet today but I am leaning toward Jeff Atwater. Go ahead and roast me. I know he was on a board for a failed bank, and that is bad, but I kind of appreciate his pre-BP fight against offshore drilling, and know the Cabinet someday could be the body making choices on who gets to pollute our shores. Loranne Ausley has never stood out to me. I have nothing against her, but I don't see her winning this thing.

A Primary Day Experiment

So I am told there is a primary election in Florida today. The real game kicks off tomorrow morning after we know exactly what the November election will look like in Florida, but tonight, I attempt an experiment in blog coverage. I have created blog posts below on every major statewide and Congressional election being waged in Florida tonight. As the results flow in, I will update each of these posts.

I will also have a post above this one tonight declaring the winners as we learn them. It will be an adventure. Of course, I have some professional obligations tonight as well, and do plan to tuck my kids in at some point. So this may all fall apart. But hopefully this turns out fantastic and can be duplicated again in November.

Here are links to my posts.

FL-Senate: Is is Meek or Greene?

FL-Governor: Will the GOP pick McCollum or Scott?

FL-02: Can Boyd fend off Lawson?

FL-08: Who will face Grayson in November?

FL-17: A successor for Meek is chosen.

FL-24: Kosmas has a primary and the GOP names a challenger

FL-Attorney General: Both parties have unpredictable contests.

Other House races: Of little consequence, but who knows?

Primary Day - Florida Attorney General

Update: Right now it seems Bondi has won the Republican nomination. She has 38 percent of the vote to Kottkamp's 33. Kottkamp has conceded. A few months ago this seemed a slamdunk for the Lt. Gov, but he never was able to take advantage of the name recognition gained from his office. In the past few weeks, Bondi has surged.

Update: Gelber is outstripping Aronberg about 60-40 right now. I don't know if that can be turned around.

For Republicans, this seems to be between Bondi (now at 39) and Kottkamp (around 34 percent.)

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State Sens. Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg duke it out on the Democratic side.

For the Republicans, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, former state prosecutor and former HCA secretary Holly Benson fight for the nod.

Why Tough Primaries Rule

Everyone likes a good fireworks show, and we are finally getting it in the Democratic party primaries in Florida. Unfortunately, party leadership is as flummoxed by the idea of competition as ever, as demonstrated by some of the comments in this Creative Loafing piece, but progressive voters and better informed and better off for the recent primary season tensions making headlines right now.

I think the best example is in the current Attorney General race, an affair which until the past several weeks was failing to win any attention. Right now, I think Democrats are on track to win this race, though I have yet to see a poll which pits either Democratic candidate against any of the Republicans. Why do I think this? Because people are paying attention. Why are people paying attention? Because things are getting deliciously nasty.

For what it's worth, I think state Sen. Dan Gelber has the upper hand, despite this poll cited in Sunshine State News which shows state Sen. Dave Aronberg winning 20-18. Those doing math at home realize that's a lot of undecided voters for a two-man race. But those voters will make up their minds soon. Most party leaders have avoided choosing sides in the race, mostly because either candidate would do well in a general election contest, but even that is starting to change.

Things got good this weekend as Aronberg began running television ads ripping Gelber for working at Akerman Senterfitt. (That link goes to The Buzz, which apparently had to video the ads off television because Aronberg doesn't do the YouTube thing) Now these negative ads have folks like Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich, enough so she got off the fence and endorsed Gelber. Via that Creative Loafing piece:

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"Maybe I was a little naïve," Rich said by telephone last week. "I was going to be neutral, until this happened," she says of the BP fracas. "It pushed me over to the Gelber side."

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Well good. Democratic voters have to make a decision soon. So should leadership. Many people say these attacks are unfair, and that Gelber's association with the firm hardly means he was defending BP. True enough. I noted here that Gelber was in on the importance oil would play in all Cabinet races long before that dawned on Aronberg. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't defend himself.

After Aronberg brought up the issue, Gelber left his firm. Should Gelber win the primary, that means he has shaken a bit of baggage before the general. And Republicans won't be able to hit him nearly so hard. If Aronberg wins the primary, he has a stronger position as the bringer of high standards.

And as attacks go, these aren't awful. Does anyone remember Peter Deutsch destroying Bettey Castor with a false link to Palestinian terrorists via USF professor Sami al-Arian? Deutsch, who was losing the Democratic primary for Senate in 2004, decided to scorch the earth and say since Castor was president of USF while a professor was there raising money to help Palestinian causes, she must secretly be harboring terrorists. That was total garbage, and by Duetsch running TV ads about it during the primary, it gave Republican Mel Martinez a vetted death blow, probably a big enough one to win the close election.

But what will the Republicans do with the BP connection? None of them will even take a stance against offshore drilling.

Meanwhile, this entire episode is getting both Gelber and Aronberg attention while the Republicans seem to run an invisible campaign. Jeff Kottkamp, Holly Bensen and Pam Bondi may as well be random assemblies of letters on the ballot. None is a star, and none can establish themselves as frontrunners.

So long as the entire ticket isn't destroyed here, the high-profile tension is good for Gelber and Aronberg. Whoever wins, at least somebody cares that it happened.

Unliked is not Unconstitutional

Since Impeachment Bill McCollum first filed a lawsuit against health care reform, I have been disgusted by a political stunt and the use of taxpayer dollars to counter the agenda of duly elected leaders. I was pleased to see Alex Sink and the Democratic party rake him over the coals for this anti-democratic, anti-fiscal conservative act. But when I read the words today of a Republican looking to succeed McCollum as Attorney General, I was struck by just how unconcerned modern Republicans can be about the law.

From Sunshine State News:

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Backing Attorney General Bill McCollum’s constitutional challenge to new federal health-care laws backed by President Barack Obama, Benson called the new measures “the slippery slope toward socialized medicine” and said she would continue the fight against it.

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That is Holly Bensen, former Health Care Administration secretary and one of three Republicans vying for the post. And according to a poll by the same news source, she is in a dead heat with Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp and former state prosecutor Pam Bondi. (Of note, I have frequently called Kottkamp the clear GOP frontrunner, but this poll indicates there is no such thing.)

What disturbs me about Bensen's position is that it is not simply politically-motivated but also logically bereft. McCollum has argued that mandating people have health insurance is a burden which violates their constitutional rights, kind of like making people pay taxes. This is stupid, of course, but it's an argument. I don't believe it will hold legal muster, and I don't think McCollum cares. He just wants to rile up the conservative base during the governor's race with an anti-Obama lawsuit he knows will be thrown out, but which likely won't reach a conclusion until his tenure as Attorney General is done.

Bensen, though, doesn't go through the niceties of making up a paper-thin justification. She just calls the reform names. SOCIALISM! What garbage. You don't need to be a lawyer to see the problems with this line of attack.

Of course, health care reform is not socialism. The proposal which could most accurately be labeled as socialism was the public option, but that was dropped during the watering down process our Congress calls legislating. If only this health care package was socialism. Then it might guarantee fairness and equity in the availability of medical care in the United States. Instead, the package signed into law by President Obama was little more than a series of new regulations, most of which won't go into effect until after the end of his first term.

Which gets to the fundamental problem with Bensen's statement. Socialism in and of itself is not unconstitutional. With all the talk among tea partiers of protecting the Constitution and fending off socialism, you would think our Founding Fathers were gripped by a red scare and that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was among the co-signers on the Declaration of Independence. Did John Adams and Thomas Jefferson envision this reform package? Probably not, but they didn't seem pre-occupied with making sure such laws would never get passed in the 13 colonies.

Much of what the American government does is socialism, including the few programs which conservatives so bitterly defend. Forcing all Americans to chip in tax dollars to pay for a police force that watches over our own people? Implementing a National Guard with the right to fire upon and kill this nation's citizens if they cause unrest? Forming a military force capable of imposing the political will of American leaders on neighboring countries based on the supposed notion of protecting America's collective interests? That is socialism. Helping poor people pay for surgery? Not so much.

And yet the creation of a police force and military are not unconstitutional. Why? The drafters of the Constitution were not concerned with socialism. Indeed, even after escaping the tyranny of King George III, our Founding Fathers still found a need for some centralized government and working function of society as a whole.

It is bad enough that an Attorney General who supposedly hates frivolous lawsuits would file suit on a law he simply doesn't like in an attempt to suck up to nutjobs. If we end up with an Attorney General who doesn't understand the basics of what makes something unconstitutional, then we are taking a nearly-impossible-to-find step down.

Oil Driving the Races

Some infighting among the Democrats running for Attorney General shows how much the oil spill in the Gulf will drive every Cabinet race in Florida this year. And it renews a bit of my faith in AG hopeful Dave Aronberg, even if it raises the prospect of the primary getting ugly. Indeed, the episode shows exactly why good primary races can make for better general election candidates regardless who wins.

The matter began earlier this month when it was revealed Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber's law firm took on BP as a client. Gelber told the Daily Business Review in mid-June that any connection between Akerman Senterfitt and BP was a non-issue in the campaign, but by the end of the month he had resigned from the firm over the whole affair.

The timing of the resignation, though, appears tricky. Aronberg on June 28 called for Gelber to resign from the firm. Then Gelber said he already had, and had done it because the firm took BP as a client, but just forget to tell everybody about that. But Aronberg continued to hammer Gelber, noting the North Miami Democrat wasn't exactly high-tailing it out of the office. "The Republican attack machine would have a field day with this," Aronberg notes. I tend to agree.

So finally the AG race gets interesting.

More than a month ago I was expressing some disappointment in Aronberg for not making oil a bigger issue in the campaign this year. As I said then, it is quite possible the next AG will sit on a Cabinet with the power to allow drilling in state waters, 3 to 10 miles from shore, and Gelber at that time was making far more noise about the matter. Since that time, Aronberg has joined Gelber is calling for a special session bannning such drilling, but was woefully late to the party. Now, he is here and fighting hard.

Of course, I am pretty sure Aronberg is wrong about there being any chance Gelber could be disqualified from representing the state as AG because of a connection to Akerman. Even if Gelber could not represent the case in person, he could put one of many attorneys working within the Attorney General's Office on it.

But raising this issue is good for Aronberg, and it is good for Gelber. Already, Aronberg has applied pressure that makes Gelber a better candidate by forcing the state Senator to disassociate himself from BP and Akerman in any way. And it also raises the profile of the race substantially. While nobody in this race is exactly a household name in Florida, Republican Jeff Kottkamp has a higher profile as Lt. Governor than either Gelber has as a state Senator or Aronberg does as a state Representative. And since Aronberg is best known in Southwest Florida, where Kottkamp also lives, upping the profile of the Democrats in this race is vitally important for him.

I think oil will be the most important factor in this race come fall. After all, Kottmamp's great contribution to the oil effort has been to organize a prayer. The Democrats, meanwhile, are engaged in a fiesty debate over who is best prepared to hold BP to task for threatening our coastline with the worth environmental screw-up in American history. You tell me who sounds more serious about serving the public? The AG office serves as the ultimate prosecutor working on behalf of the state, and holding companies accountable who threaten the public welfare is what its lead official should care about more than prayer circles.

Oil is already hitting Florida shores. Once our sands are infected with sludge, we should expect the mudslinging to have more sticking power.